HPV Vaccine Does Not Increase Unsafe Sex Urge: Study

February 9, 2015August 14, 2015 by

The HPV vaccine is learned to not lead teens engage in more unsafe sex. Federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says it is in the market since 2006, but has been used less widely compared to other recommended vaccines available.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

HPV, or human papillomavirus, is recommended for three doses for boys and girls in the age group of 11 to 12. A 2010 CDC study suggests one dose is enough to cut down risk of contracting HPV by 82 percent.

CDC further adds in its study that even though the success rate is high, only 57 percent of girls were given at least one dose and just 38 percent of boys were given all the three doses in 2013.

Lead author of the study and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Anupam Jena, said the reason for low use of MPV vaccine is the perception of physicians and parents that it could lead to increase in unsafe sex.

Jena is also an assistant professor of Health Care Policy and Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He added further that this is the real concern and cannot be dismissed automatically, but they need to show some scientific evidence to prove they are on the right path.

Jena and his colleagues tried to find from the database of an insurance whether people having the vaccine had higher rates of sexually transmitted infections compared to those who didn’t had. For this the medical history of 21,000 teens between the age group of 12 to 18 were looked from batch between 2005 and 2010. This data was compared with 180,000 women who missed the vaccine in life.

The findings suggested those who were vaccinated didn’t have higher rates of infections and they didn’t had increased rates of unsafe sex.

It was also found from the study that the rates of vaccination in the US was pale compared to similar other countries such as Australia where the rate was up to 90 percent. However, Jena said their new study would encourage physicians and parents to get their teens vaccinated.

There is other side of the finding too. A comment by Robert Bednarczyk says that physicians have not recommended this vaccine much compared to other recommended vaccines.

Bednarczyk is an assistant professor in the Hubert Department of Global health at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta.

He said that the vaccine is to be given before an adolescent as the immune response is strong then compared to the older teens.